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Monday, February 4, 2008

running under the river elbe in hamburg is a beautiful tunnel like no other. this 1/2 kilometre ‘technical marvel’, known as the ‘old river elbe tunnel’, was built in 1911, sits 24 metres below the river and connects central hamburg with the shipyard island of steinwerder. what makes the tunnel unique are the entry points on each side of the river: rather than just driving straight into the tunnel, vehicles enter a freight elevator which slowly descends to the tunnel below, the tunnel then taking traffic to a similar elevator on the opposite side which lifts them back to ground level.

the tunnel is still used to a lesser extent today by pedestrians, cyclists and cars but is now considered more a tourist attraction due to it’s quirky nature.

What happened to Frank Gehry? Some call it a midlife crises, others chalk it up to a moment of revelation. Whatever occurred, this rather conventional middle-aged architect changed virtually overnight into an avante garde designer and created what is arguably the most influential residence of the 20th Century. Deconstructivism now pervades the field of architecture and has influenced virtually every contemporary all-star architect in the world. Gehry is perhaps best known for his curvy, metalic wave-form museums in Bilbao, Seattle, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, but it all started with strange impulses applied to his own traditional little Santa Monica house in the late 1970s.

Frank Gehry’s house in Santa Monica came before its time as a harbinger of the Deconstructivist movement. The first recognizedpublic Deconconstructivist architectural project came almost a decade later. Gehry took his seemingly ordinary house in Santa Monica and began changing things incredibly strange ways. He took a step beyond the playful reworkings of Postmodern architecture, where traditional design symbols were reinterpreted, and instead starting using materials and strategies few applied to architectural projects.

Gehry started by tearing the drywall off of interior walls to expose structural studs buried in the old house, then subtracted and added architectural elements seemingly without a coherent plan throughout the building. He added chain link and plywood to the exterior. His iterative transformations were responses to various impulses and were allowed to coexist without a clear rhyme or reason, flying in the face of both Modernism and Postmodernism - designs from which were typically justified in terms of some kind of central concept.

Since this small house came into being, the idea of deconstructing traditional elements and reassembling them according to obscure and abstract comments has become the norm in the industry, particularly for major public buildings. Gehry’s subsequent work (shown above) took this to new levels each time. World architects like Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, and Bernard Tschumi have all created critical works in the subsequent decades that have been influenced by Gehry’s little house. There is considerable controversy surrounding his work and the current state of Deconstructivism, though the influence of Gehry’s approach to design is unquestionably felt throughout the practice of global architecture today.

Finally . . . eating healthy does not mean that you have to sacrifice taste. We even provide you with simple grass fed beef recipes for success.

You have a choice . . . purchase vacuum sealed patties for quick thaw and convenience OR make your own burgers and recipes with our tubes of ground beef. Your grass fed beef is perfectly packaged for your needs.

Our ground beef burgers and tubes are 85% to 87% lean beef with no added fat . . . all you get is natural ground beef.

Our NEW ground chuck is even leaner at 90 to 95% lean . . . typical grocery store beef is 25% fat so by purchasing our ground chuck you get to enjoy beef without extra calories and fat.

Our ranch owner, Dr. Patricia Whisnant, is a veterinarian who oversees the health and nutritional requirements of our cattle.

Our beef is processed individually to eliminate contamination the way that beef was processed a hundred years ago . . . no chemical baths and no irradiation are needed.

Your family will never know that they are eating a health food. Just follow our tips for cooking grass fed beef until you get the hang of preparing leaner beef.

Because grass fed beef is so lean you will be pleasantly surprised that your soups, casseroles and meat loaf will not be greasy with this meat. Once you have prepared a few meals with this grass fed beef, you won't want to return to fatty grain fed beef.

These gift boxes will delight your gourmet friends since dry aged grass fed beef is a delicacy and not found in your average store.AMERICAN GRASS FED BEEF

We've long been obsessed with Clinton Hill's Broken Angel building. It sits on the corner of Downing and Quincy, just a few blocks South of Pratt, but it's visible from a bunch of spots around the neighborhood. The building is a work-in-progress by Arthur Wood, a "self-taught" architect and painter. It resembles a Brooklyn tenement version of a Antoni Gaudi building-- compare the exterior to the Sagrada Famiia church, or Casa Battlo in Barcelona. According to this Times article from 2002, Wood bought the building in 1971 for $2000, and has been working on it ever since.

It's a day of destruction in the once-peaceful borough of Brooklyn. First a crane came down at Red Hook Ikea; now, legendary Clinton Hill building Broken Angel has caught fire. The building, a previous Rumblings notable, was described here last year as an "in-progress work of art and residence of Arthur Wood, and Best Urban Folly of 2001." Curbed tipsters whispered at the time that it's a mess inside. Hmmm.

Condos, Not Chappelle, to Save Brooklyn's Broken Angel

Photo: NYTimes.com

Last time we checked in with Broken Angel — the Clinton Hill building that sprouts a code-defying crown of striking annexes — its owners' son was trying to line up Michel Gondry and Dave Chappelle for benefit shows, and Chappelle was saying he was willing to help. Now it seems like Chappelle's help may not be needed. The answer to Broken Angel's woes could be, well, the answer to absolutely everything these days: more condos.

The owners, Arthur and Cynthia Wood, reached a deal with a local developer who will convert the building into residences. The Woods will keep an apartment and an art studio in it, and the ground floor will house some sort of "community space." The Broken Angel stands on a sturdy foundation of a former Brooklyn Trolley HQ; the big question, of course, is whether anyone will get to live on its upper floors, with their junkyard-Gaudi stained-glass windows, and whether those windows will even survive the conversion. Of course, maybe the Woods will get really lucky and Dash Snow will deign to ejaculate on the thing. Those condos would be worth a fortune.

With the fate of Cynthia and Arthur Wood hanging in the balance, we thought this would be a good time for everyone who hasn't seen Dave Chappelle's 2003 movie Block Party to check out this excerpt that provides a close-up of the idiosyncratic building and its unique owners. According to a Daily News article today, the couple was ordered out of the building by DOB but the order has not been enforced yet."This has put my wife into a distraught state and also myself because this is like Nazi Germany as far as I'm concerned," said Wood, 75. "It's emotional terrorism."

Ian M. Sherwin Giclée

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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings.His work is amazing.